


two fathers, alike in dignity

by tamilprongspotter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fathers Not Being Shitty For Once, First War with Voldemort, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Indian James Potter, Indian Potters, Miscarriage, No Tamilian Would Name Their Child Fleamont, POV Character of Color, Parenthood, Person of Color James Potter, South Asian Potters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-14 16:19:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18479869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tamilprongspotter/pseuds/tamilprongspotter
Summary: sometimes you just *clenches fist* really like your kid





	1. of a thousand children that could have been, i got you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dorcasdeadowes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorcasdeadowes/gifts), [JackNSallyGal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackNSallyGal/gifts).



> This draft was originally titled "if you fuck with winning, put your lighters to the sky" thank to [this Cavetown cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjMc8I21vjI), which basically was the soundtrack to writing this fic. There's not enough dad positivity in the world, mostly because most dads don't deserve it, but hey. The Potter men are good at what they do (evidently, having children and dying).

You are thirty-five when you find out, not for the first time, that you are going to be a father. Thirty-five is old, for a wizard. Older still for an Indian wizard. Beyond inexcusable for an Indian wizard whose siblings’ children are all within sniffing distance of double digits. It is not for lack of trying. 

It is certainly not for lack of trying. 

Your wife always looks tired these days and you’ve told her, in no uncertain terms, that this is the last go around. If this doesn’t take, if there isn’t a bouncing baby in her arms in nine months’ time, you’re not indulging this silly notion again. She has wanted this as much as you have, for as long as you have, and you feel like a villain, like a dictator, like you are bleeding her dry for some impossible future, watching all the love in the world you share wash over the floor in sorrow. You are done with watching love die a thousand grisly deaths at the hand of a god that knows no mercy.

You want to be happy. 

You want her to be happy. 

You want to be happy together.

There are plenty of ways to be happy without a child and you and your wife have been lucky enough to discover every one, little sunbursts of treasure hidden in the earth that you unearth, one after another, like little rest stops on the way to the greater pot of gold at the end of the earth. You are the second son (once the third, but not anymore) of a lesser Wizarding family, one that doesn’t need more heirs (which correlates quite directly with more enemies, especially with all of you as outspoken as you are) now that your older (once the oldest, now your only) brother has a son.

A beautiful boy, with cheeks like apples and a smirk that could bring God to his knees. His eyes disappear when he smiles, and he smiles often and proudly, daring the world to not share his joy. You fall for him in a thousand new ways every time he comes racing up to your front door with a story to tell. He’s got a room in your house, the innumerable drawings he leaves behind plastering the walls like wallpaper, and it looks like the aftermath of a hurricane because you’d never ask him to clean it.

You go look at the mess of his existence sometimes, a fond smile on your face, imagining a little person living in it full time, wading through the papers and crayons and relics of boundless jubilation. 

You imagine a little boy with your wife’s eyes, and maybe your nose, and his cousin’s knowing smile, racing little plastic cars around the perimeter of the room. You imagine a little girl, braids tied off with ribbons, with a set of watercolor paints she inevitably spills all over the carpet. You imagine yourself comforting her while you erase the evidence with a wave of your wand, imagine yourself holding her gently like the treasure she is. A little girl with plasters on her knees, climbing the fruit tree in your front yard. A little boy with his nose in a book, sitting on the kitchen counter. 

All these ghosts cover every inch of the house, a thousand children that could have been. Somehow you fill the empty spaces they’ve left behind by giving the love you would have given them (should have given them) to your brother’s boy, your only hope, the closest thing you have to a child of your own. The closest thing you might ever have, and he’s seven already. In four more years, he’ll be away at Hogwarts. Seven years after that, he’ll have his own life and you’ll be left, bereft, all over again.

You taught him how to bowl a leg spin yesterday, made him watch you do it again and again until he felt confident enough to try himself, and then spent an hour sitting in the grass, watching him practice, determination furrowing his brow, until he could repeat it twice in a row, then thrice. He reminds you of yourself, eternally seconds from shrieking with joy, so thrilled to simply be alive, and you wonder if, someday, you will be lucky enough to teach your own child the things you lavish on your brother’s. 

You cycle through the array of ghosts in this room alone, impose the faces and stories you’ve dreamed up for them on the grape hiding somewhere in your wife’s abdomen. Maybe this one is a little boy that likes puzzles, solving all the problems in the world in between chewing up his board books. Maybe this one is a little girl that likes to play Quidditch. Maybe this one is a little boy with more friends than he can count, a little girl with a smile that could rival the sun. 

Maybe this one is the child that survives.

You are thirty-five and you are tired of being sad and by the time this baby comes, you will be thirty-six, which is uncommonly old for a first time parent, among wizards and Muggles alike. 

Maybe you were just never meant to be average. 

Maybe your child will be as special as their circumstances.


	2. they say there's a prophecy about us. wild, right?

You are twenty and you’re holding a baby. 

_Your_ baby. 

He has your wife’s eyes and pink, shiny gums for miles, and his little nose is just so small. 

You haven’t seen too many babies in your life, but if anyone had told you they’d be this small, this fragile, you’d have balked at the idea of having one of your own. Maybe it was for the best, then, that you didn’t know, that you assumed he’d come in neat, adult proportions, inflating himself like a balloon the second he was out in the world. You know, logically, that him growing up will take time, that a few years from now, between your personality and your wife’s, he’ll be talking so much that you’ll miss today, miss a time before words and friends and tantrums, but you wish you could talk to your son now and hear him talk back.

You wish you could see understanding in his eyes when you tell him how hard the past two years have been. How you’ve seen friends and foes alike fall on the battlefield and each death in the Order, whether you knew them well or not, feels like an insult to the earth that nurtured them, the parents that raised them to do the right thing, the world that needed what they had to give. The world that will never get that. 

You have seen people ripped apart and bleeding die on your doorstep, have seen your wife sacrifice sleep at the altar of healing others, have seen far too much for your baby to ever comprehend. You know the feeling of waiting for news far too intimately, have received too many black envelopes from the Ministry, have felt each loss like a hot poker through your chest. 

You are still waiting on your cousin’s body, all these years later, some small part of you wishing that he might be alive out there, might be waiting for you.

Here you are, holding this innocent, precious thing, and wishing peace into his heart. Here you are, with gentle hands and a gentler smile, a built in role model for this little boy that is going to see so vividly that the world isn't made to comfort him, to contort itself into a cocoon around him so he has _time_ to become whoever he wants. You will be that cocoon instead. You will stare down death for this boy, who's currently sucking on your pinky finger, and death will lose.

Confidence is never something you've been short on, but maintaining it, especially lately, is a struggle. Remembering, in the depths of war, that you are sacrificing for a good cause is a luxury afforded to few. Money can only do so much. Status can only do so much. Blood can only do so much. You are terrified to bring this brilliant son of yours into such a world, but he's here now. All you can do is keep him here, succeeding where you never had before.

You waited for Neil to come home for three weeks before you gave up. And even now, it hits you like a hammer to the gut -- you gave up on him. You stopped waiting. You stopped sitting in the Owlery at Hogwarts, waiting for a letter that would never come. You haven't allowed yourself to give up on anything since, for better or for worse, and you hope your son will benefit.

It still feels like something is missing, even if you know in your heart that your cousin (your brother) is gone and never coming back, in every moment in your life. And now you miss him like a limb, the ease with which he’d declare all your worries pointless, the ease with which he’d remind you that you are uniquely qualified to love this little boy with everything you’ve got for as long as you can. You miss a world that never got to be, one where he steals Harry from your grip now, holds him close and tickles his little ears, tells him the same stories he told you. It's weird, mourning something that never happened. Neil is always going to be twenty-three and here you are, somewhere in the neighborhood of two and a half years short of the day your cousin died, with a child in your arms and fear consuming you whole.

You are in desperate need of reassurance, are projecting how much you miss your parents onto every single person you see. Frank tells you it’s normal to feel like you’re still a child yourself, like you need all the help in the world to this thing that should be natural, but Frank has his parents still. Yours are beyond your reach until this stupid war ends, and even then, they’re old. You bear no illusions about how comfortable old age is -- part of growing up with parents carrying age old doubts and worries like yokes around their shoulders, slowly sinking further into the ground with each step. You bear no illusions about how happy theirs will be, with your child to brighten their days, either.

You’ve been called an incorrigible optimist in varying tones of surprise, dismay, and exasperation and you are proud of it.

“I think you’re a miracle, Hari.” You trace the soft slope of his little nose. “That’s something we have in common, I think. My parents always said they knew I was special, the day I was born. I think you’re gonna be special too.”


End file.
